Sunday, 20 January 2013

Getting Started With Facebook Graph Search

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently revealed their new search feature called the graph search. It is sure change the way of finding people, places, photos, interests etc. Facebook has already released its limited beta version; the full version is expected to be available shortly. Even though the beta version is more than a search bar, its efficiency is yet to be tested. It is available only in Desktop version and for English (US) audiences for the time being.

The Graph search bar will be slightly bigger in appearance, and will be docked on the top section of each page replacing the old white colored search bar. Facebook claims that its performance almost matches Google’s Search bar because it allows you to perform complex searches. A demo search done at the launching event went like this:

“Friends of my friends who are single, male from San Francisco, cliff”

This kind of a search feature will help you to find your old friends and colleagues and much more. What’s shown above is just an example, and you can perform searches like “liked by your friends, visited by your friends “ to locate things faster and easier.

Facebook claims that graph search will direct its user according to their search query and the search result does not depend on their friend lists or the mutual friends he has, which was in practice earlier.Search results will be personalized and may differ from person to person, however the results for generic terms would be similar.

One of the greatest worries of Facebook was that, if its user’s did not expand their friend list then the world’s largest social network would become less and less active and eventually become a mass graveyard of social profiles. This worry is almost being a reality for Facebook. The social network hasn't seen any significant growth in the average friends per person recently. Facebook now believe that, the introduction of Graph search will encourage users to add more friends quickly and will help them recover from losing more users and their nose-diving market share.